Do fighter pilots still make sense in the age of drones?
Ukraine shows that AI-powered drones are more effective and cheaper than fighter pilots. The military lobby is delaying the inevitable shift.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
The war of the future doesn't need pilots: the data says so
Ukraine has shown that 90% of modern military personnel are surplus. Drones, with AI, precision and absurdly low costs, have turned fighter pilots into an expensive relic. But the military lobby resists: one hour of fighter jet flight costs as much as an apartment on the coast.
The technological argument: smoke to keep the status quo
They say AI is vulnerable to hacking, that it can't improvise like a human, that it loses GPS. All of that is nonsense, as anyone who asked Google's AI found out. In real war, ethics is the first casualty. What matters is lethal effectiveness and cost. Commercial airliners already fly 90% on autopilot; the pilot only lands for fun.
The real obstacle: the pilots' caste
Years of selection, training and multimillion-dollar contracts create an internal lobby that won't give up its privileged seat. Anduril is already working on autonomous drones where a single human decides over hundreds of assets. War is going to look like a video game, but defense budgets remain tied to crewed fighter jets. It's a matter of time, but the entrenchment of military elites delays the inevitable.
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Ukraine has shown that 90% of modern military personnel are surplus. Drones, with AI, precision and absurdly low costs, have turned fighter pilots into an expensive relic. But the military lobby resists: one hour of fighter jet flight costs as much as an apartment on the coast.
The technological argument: smoke to keep the status quo
They say AI is vulnerable to hacking, that it can't improvise like a human, that it loses GPS. All of that is nonsense, as anyone who asked Google's AI found out. In real war, ethics is the first casualty. What matters is lethal effectiveness and cost. Commercial airliners already fly 90% on autopilot; the pilot only lands for fun.
The real obstacle: the pilots' caste
Years of selection, training and multimillion-dollar contracts create an internal lobby that won't give up its privileged seat. Anduril is already working on autonomous drones where a single human decides over hundreds of assets. War is going to look like a video game, but defense budgets remain tied to crewed fighter jets. It's a matter of time, but the entrenchment of military elites delays the inevitable.
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Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (27 replies).
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